Steven Spielberg has dubbed actor Tom Hiddleston “the new Errol Flynn”. He meant Flynn’s heroic swashbuckling acting in classic silver-screen pictures such as Captain Blood and The Adventures Of Robin Hood — not his legendary swordsmanship, off screen, with the ladies.
And Hiddleston, 30, certainly cuts a dash as Captain Nicholls, the World War I British cavalry officer who purchases Joey, the red bay, and takes him to fight the Hun in Spielberg’s glorious big-screen version of War Horse, which opens here on January 13.
When we meet at Soho House in London, heads turn as Hiddleston walks by. Spielberg told me that when the British actor visited his West Coast office to discuss the role, all the girls were swooning over him. “˜They went all googly-eyed and I said: “That’s the next Errol Flynn!”.
“He’s got honest charm,” he added. “It’s not false. He’s very sincere. He’s the real deal.”
Hiddleston’s old-fashioned swagger is totally in keeping with War Horse’s nods to great movies from the past: Lawrence Of Arabia; Gone With The Wind; the films of John Ford and Howard Hawkes. Hiddleston - a Cambridge graduate - has about 15 minutes of screen-time, as one of several people who take Joey’s reins for a while.
“Captain Nicholls is not a soldier - he’s an educated gentleman, and he’s in the Army because he can ride,” Tom told me. “For the officer class, it was almost summer camp for the generation that was fox hunting in the winter in red coats and in khaki in the summer.
“They thought it’d be over by Christmas, but suddenly they’re charging across No Man’s Land with their sabres flashing in the sun, up against machine guns.”
One scene shows Nicholls leading the charge on Joey. Spielberg wanted to capture the sense of confidence that abruptly turns to fear when Nicholls realises what he and his men are up against. The actor was 29 then; Spielberg told him to lop 20 years off his age.
“˜He said: ‘I don’t want a look of shock and terror on your face. Show me the nine-year-old boy’,” Hiddleston recalled.
You will know the moment we’re discussing because the expression on Hiddleston’s face is one you’ll never forget.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will attend the London premiere of War Horse on January 08, 2012.
Hiddleston is about to ride another mount, in his role as Henry V in a BBC TV film. It’s part of a series of Shakespeare pictures based on Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. Tom also plays Hal in the two Henry IV dramas.
“Hal goes from being a rebellious, drunken, irresponsible prince to one of the most courageous, charismatic kings of England we’ve ever had,” he said.
He will shoot Henry IV, opposite Jeremy Irons, next month. Then, he’ll begin work on Thor 2, reprising his role as the dark prince Loki. Loki also crops up in The Avengers (out in April 2012).
Hiddelston has had a tremendous run lately: he’s also played F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, and a former fighter pilot in Terence Davies’s sublime film The Deep Blue Sea. - Daily Mail